Adapting your garden layout with special attention to access, getting around and working.
Bare patches encourage weeds to grow, mulching the surface of the soil with bark, compost from your bin or well rotted manure shuts out the weeds and helps to retain the soils moisture, saving on watering. Planting ground cover plants or laying a weed suppresant material and planting through it also helps to keep borders weed free.
Raising flower and vegetable beds reduces a lot of bending down, especially if they are raised to waist level. I have included a lot more information on my raised garden page. Keeping the beds narrow reduces stretching and bending across to work. Even the most basic raised bed made from old car tyres can dramatically reduce back strain as you won't need to bend over your garden for long periods.
Lawns even small ones are high maintenance needing regular mowing during spring summer and autumn.Wildflower lawns need less maintenance and can be interesting and fun.
Steep steps can put a lot of strain on your back, consider adapting them to have more steps with lower rises or even a gently rising ramp. Bear in mind the more steps you build the further the steps will need to run. Its better to build the steps backwards into the border rather than forward, causing a trip hazzard. If adapting the steps isn't feasable adding handrails could help take the strain of your back. More about layout on my elderly garden design page.
Adapted gardening tools for working with a bad back.
Where possible use tools with long handles that reduce your need to stretch. Most tools can be extended by fitting specially designed extensions or telescopic arms.
Keep smaller tools in a holster on your belt to save bending down to pick them up.
Loppers and pruners with a ratchet mechanism and blades that are kept sharp help reduce the strain on your back.
You can have a look at a selection of tools and if you want purchase specially adopted gardening tools for gardening with a painful back on my tools for the disabled page.
No dig gardening.
No dig gardening is ideal for gardeners with bad backs, its also better for the soil and can produce better results than the old fashioned double dig method. It takes a bit of hard work setting up but but if you have a painful back its well worth getting someone in to do the hard work for you. All the information you or your helper will need is on my gardening without digging page.
Planting with a bad back.
Slow growing shrubs are easy to maintain but if you are using easy to access, raised beds try a few annuals and herbaceous perennials for interest and colour.
Use containers that are easy to reach for growing vegetables like courgettes, potatoes and lettuce. Try to group them in one spot as they will need more watering than border grown plants. container growing.
Fruit trees grown on dwarf rootstocks or trained along trellis to keep them low so you can pick the fruit at a comfortable height. are a good idea and minimise back strain.
Use ground cover plants to reduce weeding and add colour and variety.
If your garden is accesible and you bear in mind the stuff we have discussed on this and other pages you can plant almost anything. Planting tips and advice can be found by selecting the page from the menu on the left, some pages lead to others that are not in the menu so you may find it easier to google my site using the search box below.
This workseat on wheels takes the strain off your bad back when planting or weeding low down
